Your typical home fridge is a place of comfort, safety and a treasure trove of goodies when you’re hungry or needing something sweet. But the fridge can also be a deadly, dangerous and mysterious place that holds all manner of horrors if the concept of cosmic horror and how the deeply troubling dark side of the unknown can lie in any place or time. The Fridge is Red is a fascinating beast of an indie game, one that aims to chill you to the very core… and maybe put you off leftovers for quite a while!
What is The Fridge is Red?
The Fridge is Red is a deeply unsettling anthology of small stories, centred on a dark and surreal journey of a man who has lost everything and is spiralling down a path of utter despair. The mysterious and sinister-looking red fridge is a gateway and framing device of the man’s ultimate plight, acting as a symbolic container for all the wrongdoings he is about to face.
As players play each chapter and find new food items in the world, they will unlock the next chapter and further progress through the nightmarish world of one man’s unspoken trauma. With everything feeling and visually looking as though it was ripped from the golden era of survival horror. The idea of a fridge being the centre of all misery for one induvial is indeed a bizarre one, as you dive deeper into repressed memories through items such as a mouldy sandwich, or an 8-month-old jam is unsettling. This feels akin to something David Lynch would concoct on a feverish, trip for a midnight snack.
The fridge holds many, many troubling events, fused together through actual memories, but primal fears, the unknown, and that egg salad you knew you should have eaten, but didn’t fancy it after it was made.
Hmmmm forbidden doughnut!
Players will grasp what The Fridge is Red does mechanically very quickly, especially as it is a very simple game as a whole. While I can see many labelling this as a walking sim in many ways, there are plenty of neat dynamics that change the pace and attitude.
The Fridge is Red has six chapters, each focusing on a different “memory” of the protagonist. The memory holds deep routed trouble that appears to be causing massive trauma for our main man. But worst still, is how each of these memories has become a surreal and horrifying nightmare, only agitating the heart of the problem. A simple tale of working late at the office and ignoring the family becomes a terrifying escape from a hellhole infested with monstrous foes. And as new chapters open up, the story unravels and a bleak tale of loss, sorrow and despair unfold in a manner akin to that of Silent Hill.
While it’s a story we’ve seen many times before and done better (with the likes of Silent Hill 2), I do admire the variety of chilling horrors that await on each level. The aforementioned working late at the office level has some of the best moments of the entire game, including an elevator that slowly turns into a mushy box of flesh, that spews watching eyeballs from the elevator buttons. There are some great visuals that will certainly unnerve you, and then there are those which feel very familiar and a little tiresome by this point.
The story charters one man’s descent into despair and brings players a variety of moments, from making a long drive through a snowstorm to attending a funeral where you’re the most disputed attendee there. Each chapter presents a handful of puzzles, scares and neat dynamics for environmental storytelling. Some levels are great, others not so much.
Personally, the first chapter is one of the best and does feel like the developers may have given us the best of the best way too soon! This level is the haunted office, with the fleshy elevator. This level could have spanned into an entire game if done correctly, as you venture through different floors of the building, trying to make it to the exit. There are some great visuals and a neat moment where you need to plunge spiked buttons into a panel filled with eyeballs. It's really unsettling, really gross and absolutely enthralling as a horror experience.
Other levels vary, with some being incredibly simple, yet offering the same level of disturbing horror, and then others just massively tedious and overstaying their welcome. The driving level could have worked well, but just goes on and on without much of a payoff. The problem is the lack of scares or the continuing build-up to something which never really occurs. Oh, and there is plenty of backtracking, but not the fun kind.
That pasta is starting to give me the evil eye!
Games which are mechanically simple can be some of the best you play. Horror games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent (a game I’m personally not a fan of, but admire greatly) executes simple gameplay but overall have a great gameplay loop companies by massive scares and a rich atmosphere to elevate and experience to new levels.
The Fridge is Red has the right idea at times, and I think the first level shows where this game could have gone. But many of the levels are maze-like ventures, with tedious backtracking and a lack of navigation, making it easy to get lost. I felt like at times the game was trolling me but doing it so in a painfully dull way. And then we get levels which showcase great atmosphere, neat puzzles, and bone-crunching intensity.
There is no combat in The Fridge is Red, and that’s fine, but without something that inflicts conflict or mayhem, you need to be either very clever or push the intensity to the maximum. And The Fridge is Red does 50% of the time, and the other half feels a little sloppy and uninspired. Much like an actual anthology if you think about it, like Love, Death and Robots where some are good, some are great and some are awful! But all the chapters are linked together in a cohesive narrative.
It’s a weird one, as the exploration, the scares, puzzles, visuals, and general pacing work well on some levels, and not so much on others. You get cool objectives such as fighting a possessed coffin in one chapter and then driving down an endless, dark road until you hit something in the next.
Almost like the developers looked at all the indie horror games that come out on Itch.io and wanted to combine all the best ones together in one game. A great idea for sure, and it works phenomenally well in some parts, and not so much in others.
But the one aspect which I can certainly say is the most impressive is the retro-inspired PSone visuals, which feel as though they’ve been ripped straight from a 1997 game. I loved the craft and care that went into making everything look beautifully ugly, poly-ridden, and uncanny yet familiar. It’s a style which I will say not everyone will certainly love, but the developers really went all out with the visuals, which stand out as creepy, and utterly unnerving and push forward the unsettling subject matter to new heights. Kind of how I would imagine John Carpenter would make a game if he did back in the late 1990s.
Overall?The Fridge is Red has a lot of charm, ugly beauty and surrealistic scared waiting for anyone brave enough to take a peek. But while there are some great moments here, there are others plagued with tedious backtracking, uninspired objectives and lacking good scares. I would say it's still worth checking out for some of the better chapters, as they hold some stunning visuals, and great puzzle dynamics and capture the true horrors of grief and the unknown. While not perfect (like most anthologies), it has some chilling moments that will certainly make you be paranoid about your fridge at home.
++ Unnerving horror and neat puzzle dynamics in the best chapters
+ Looks and sounds amazing
+ Genuinely chilling at its best moments
-- Some chapters are tedious and lacking in scares
- Backtracking becomes a massive setback in the worst chapters
- Story is not wholly original nor done massively differently here
A Steam review key of The Fridge is Red was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
